Social interaction and academic performance

Description

In this thesis it was argued that, since almost all activities
at school are carried on within a context of on-going social interaction,
students' experience of social interaction with teachers and
peers constitutes a major part of the high school experience and can
be expected to be related to their academic performance and schoolrelated
feelings. A review of literature revealed a paucity of
information concerning firstly, the adolescent's perspective of
within-school social interaction...[Show more] and secondly, the influence which
adolescents' experience of such interaction exerts on their academic
performance. Accordingly, this study was designed to address the
question 'How is adolescents' experience of social interaction with
teachers and peers related to their academic performance?'
At a general level it was argued that human experience (and
the behaviour based upon it) is an outcome of the interaction between
personality (which reflects past experience) and current perceptions
of the environment. In the light of this it was argued that
adolescents' experience of within-school interaction can be conceptualized
in terms of the degree of satisfaction they experience in
association with needs aroused during interaction with peers and
teachers. By their nature social needs are aroused by environmental
cues present in interactive situations and are satisfied (or left
unsatisfied) by the behavioural exchange which this interaction
implies. This theoretical perspective meshed nicely with an available
methodology [Stern's (1970) psychometric development of Murray's (1938)
needs-press model] and four needs (affiliation, supplication, deference
and dominance) were identified as characterizing adolescents' experience of within-school social interaction with peers and teachers. The degree
of dissatisfaction which students experience during school interaction
with teachers and peers was then inferred from the degree of dissonance
they reported in association with these four needs.
Two different theoretical perspectives concerning the relationship
between need-press dissonance and academic performance were investigated.
The first of these adopted a similar approach to earlier studies in this
area and argued that need-press dissonance and academic performance
would be inversely related. Specifically, it was suggested that
perceptions of a high degree of dissonance would be accompanied by the
arousal of debilitating state anxiety which would impair academic
performance, while perceptions of a low degree of dissonance would not
be accompanied by a similar arousal of anxiety and consequently
performance would not be impaired. The second perspective attempted
to place dissonance associated with social needs into the framework
of the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation and argued
that the strength of students’ extrinsic tendency to engage in
achievement activities could be inferred from the degree of dissonance
they perceived. From this perspective dissonance was viewed as a
positive tendency which encourages students to engage in achievement
activities i.e. it was argued that dissonance and performance would
be positively related.
These hypotheses and others derived from them were tested
using a variety of multivariate statistical techniques. The results
of this data analysis provided limited support for the first of the
two major hypotheses mentioned above and evidence was also found to
support the prediction that perceptions of dissonance would be
related to students’ school-related feelings. In the discussion of
these findings it was concluded that the Stern need and press scales
are better suited for research into between-school rather than
within-school effects and alternative methods of assessing adolescents'
experience of social interaction with peers and teachers were suggested.